It's quite unusual to extract a mixture of herbs, especially that many. Are you sure you know what you are doing..........?

Yes I have studied herbal medicine since high school. I don't use the standard extraction method of seven weeks in alcohol, we have better technology
so we should use it.
I use a high speed blender (mine has a 3hp motor). I usually use vodka but its too expensive. My preferred method would be to blend the herb in 70-95%
alcohol first, leave to stand over night and then add water blend again and leave for a week before filtering (I have a tincture press also).

It's quite unusual to extract a mixture of herbs, especially that many. Are you sure you know what you are doing..........?

Yes I have studied herbal medicine since high school. I don't use the standard extraction method of seven weeks in alcohol, we have better technology
so we should use it.
I use a high speed blender (mine has a 3hp motor). I usually use vodka but its too expensive. My preferred method would be to blend the herb in 70-95%
alcohol first, leave to stand over night and then add water blend again and leave for a week before filtering (I have a tincture press also).

Elsewhere on this site you have described yourself as an expert alchemist, and that you(and all 'true' alchemists like yourself) use symbolic language
when referring to your recipes so that mercury really means not the element but something else which only you and your few enlightened peers in the
alchemical field understand.
Likewise for water, where you distinguish between what the entire rest of the human race knows of as water and your 'water' which is different in
some esoteric way only you and your fellow adepts understand, and are unwilling to explain. (Other than your assertion that 'it does not wet the
hand")

Given this background, I think it's important to establish if by 'alcohol' you mean that substance mere chemists call ethanol, or if you are in fact
referring to something else that only you and your fellow true alchemists understand the esoteric nature of.

You know, like some distillation of the blood and phlegm of the kind of toad which can so often be found dwelling in the stomach of the common mining
gnome, maybe mixed with the saliva of a cockatrice.

It's quite unusual to extract a mixture of herbs, especially that many. Are you sure you know what you are doing..........?

Yes I have studied herbal medicine since high school. I don't use the standard extraction method of seven weeks in alcohol, we have better technology
so we should use it.
I use a high speed blender (mine has a 3hp motor). I usually use vodka but its too expensive. My preferred method would be to blend the herb in 70-95%
alcohol first, leave to stand over night and then add water blend again and leave for a week before filtering (I have a tincture press also).

Elsewhere on this site you have described yourself as an expert alchemist, and that you(and all 'true' alchemists like yourself) use symbolic language
when referring to your recipes so that mercury really means not the element but something else which only you and your few enlightened peers in the
alchemical field understand.
Likewise for water, where you distinguish between what the entire rest of the human race knows of as water and your 'water' which is different in
some esoteric way only you and your fellow adepts understand, and are unwilling to explain. (Other than your assertion that 'it does not wet the
hand")

Given this background, I think it's important to establish if by 'alcohol' you mean that substance mere chemists call ethanol, or if you are in fact
referring to something else that only you and your fellow true alchemists understand the esoteric nature of.

You know, like some distillation of the blood and phlegm of the kind of toad which can so often be found dwelling in the stomach of the common mining
gnome, maybe mixed with the saliva of a cockatrice.

Just for clarification.

By alcohol, yes I do mean the same variety found in vodka.

As for Alchemy, yes it is purposely written entirely in code using the names of common elements to refer to entirely different substances.

DMSO was banned because of improper use, i.e. people indiscriminately using huge quantities of it as local anaesthetic. Small amounts (anywhere
<10mL probably, really!) used to aid transmission of herbal products should be totally safe.
The reason it's difficult to review the verdict, apart from bureaucracy and the sort, is because the double blind is almost impossible because of the
garlic taste it gives to the user - yet another factor that makes most pharmaceutical companies less likely to use it.

DMSO is a really good shout. To use anything, of course, do it wisely. Don't drink methanol, don't drink chloroform. It just takes a brain cell and we
can all use stuff properly with minimum danger. Read MSDSs and judge critically. It boils down to that.

Propylene glycol might work. It's not really sticky to put it on your skin, perhaps a bit slippery though. Also, it's nontoxic, has a sweet taste,
and is one of the active ingredients in skin moisturizer. Also, you could just use isopropanol. It's only about as toxic as ethanol, it just tastes
bad. However, your body oxidizes it to acetone, which it can then use for energy. Acetone itself would be usable, if it didn't dry your skin out so
much. The only advantage of ethanol is that it doesn't have as strong of a smell.

Alternatively, you could apply for a permit to purchase alcohol without the added tax, for use manufacturing a non-beverage product.

Propylene glycol might work. It's not really sticky to put it on your skin, perhaps a bit slippery though. Also, it's nontoxic, has a sweet taste,
and is one of the active ingredients in skin moisturizer. Also, you could just use isopropanol. It's only about as toxic as ethanol, it just tastes
bad. However, your body oxidizes it to acetone, which it can then use for energy. Acetone itself would be usable, if it didn't dry your skin out so
much. The only advantage of ethanol is that it doesn't have as strong of a smell.

Alternatively, you could apply for a permit to purchase alcohol without the added tax, for use manufacturing a non-beverage product.

I just looked on ebay and Propylene glycol is very inexpensive. I will have to cut it with something maybe even water to reduce viscosity but if it
makes a good solvent for herbs then it could be what I'm looking for. Will be interesting to see how essential oils mixed in Propylene glycol behave.

What are you extractring exactly? Are you selling these "tinctures"? Aren't there regulations concerning cosmetic products I am curious? On a side
note there are toxic substances in herbs and fruits(cyanide coming to mind) so if you concentrate them you can harm yourself or others.

I really can't tell you the justification, but they restrict a lot of things on spurious grounds in the EU.

Ah, so they're kind of like Eurasia's California. Half the stuff I own is known by the state of California to cause cancer, because some study showed
that rats breathing in nothing but a fine mist of chemical X eventually developed cancer. Kind of funny though, how they specifically exempt all
natural chemical from the labeling requirement.

Oh, what about esters? Personally, I'm fond of ethyl lactate, although I can't find it anymore. It has a fruity smell kind of like coconut, and most
other esters have strong smells as well. I'm assuming you don't want the tinctures to smell too strongly.

What about natural oils, like medium-chain triglycerides, or oils containing them like coconut oil? Those seem pretty popular.

Omg what an awesome thread! Bet noooobody regrets reading this gem all the way through, â¹ï¸, not giving anyone any shit in particular just the
nature of beauracies.
Di propylene glycol is less vicious and can be prepared by esterifying propylene glycol..if you're intereested

Why the need to distill a homebrew 3 times and filter 10? I especially don't understand the filtration. I would think one rough distillation to get it
out of the mash would get you to ~50%+, a 2nd with a column should get you from 85-95.6%, filtering once should be sufficient, if things are getting
through then you just need a better filter, use celite if necessary. I've never distilled from homebrew, but why would you need to filter at all even?
Especially after 2+ distillations? After you have your 85-azeotropic EtOH if you want it any more concentrated I would dry it, filter off the drying
agent (or store it over it), and there you go, ~99.5%+ anhydrous EtOH.

The thing is it has only recently become publicly available not. For a long time it was banned and even now it is sold mostly for veterinary
application. It is still banned in personal care products to my knowledge.

In my country, DMSO is freely sold in drugstores for the purposes of making tinctures, poultices and similar topical medicine. No one who followed
proper recipes was poisoned.